The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Bad Causes Attract Bad People: @MRC_43 and Other #FreeKate Freaks

Posted on | October 23, 2013 | 78 Comments

Nearly three weeks after Florida sex offender Kaitlyn Hunt accepted a plea bargain for her crimes against a 14-year-old girl, most people have moved on and forgotten about the shabby scam whereby Hunt and her supporters raised more than $30,000 by portraying the tattoo-covered lesbian criminal as a victim of homophobia.

Alas, the “Free Kate” online movement endures, shamelessly arguing for the “right” to have sex with minors — as young as 13!

“See, Michigan has age of consent laws that I think are beyond sensible and respect the rights of individuals. If two people are in a relationship that develops a sexual component and one person is 18 or older, the relationship is perfectly legal . . . if the underage person is at least 13-16 and/or is no more than more than 5 years younger than than the “adult.” Why hasn’t the rest of the country adopted this policy yet?”

Because they don’t want people having sex with seventh-graders, maybe?

I’m fairly certain that Devan Clyde has misrepresented the specifics of Michigan’s age-of-consent laws, and that it is not “perfectly legal” for an 18-year-old to have sex with a 13-year-old there.

He is describing what is known as a “Romeo & Juliet” exemption, which typically reduces penalties for underage sex within certain age limits, without altogether legalizing such activity. Basically — and I’m sure any lawyer in any state would tell you this — an adult who is sexually involved with anyone under the age of 18 is vulnerable to prosecution, no matter what the age of consent laws may stipulate.

Suppose, for example, a 21-year-old is dating a 17-year-old in a state where the age of consent is 16. No problem, right? Don’t bet on it. Even if you can’t be charged with a sex crime, you could still get in trouble for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” or “interference with parental custody,” if the minor or her parents get angry and decide to make a hassle. Also (and this is quite common) if drugs or alcohol are involved — you provided your underage girlfriend wine coolers, or a few joints — you might be surprised to discover how little leniency the courts show you. Even if your lawyer can get the charges dropped, or  you get off with a nolo contendre plea, probation and a small fine, the mere fact of your arrest on such charges could be a stigma that haunts you forever.

The claim that it’s “perfectly legal” to have sex with 13-year-olds in Michigan is clearly dubious, but is typical of how “Free Kate” supporters keep desperately grasping for some pretext to argue that what Kaitlyn Hunt did wasn’t really a crime. To all such arguments, it should be sufficient to reply, “Read the original arrest affidavit, and read the petition to have Kaitlyn’s bond revoked.”

Plain facts and common sense, however, are incapable of penetrating the obsessive minds of the “Free Kate” fanatics. From the time they began their online crusade in May, “Free Kate” supporters demonized anyone who sided with the prosecutors or defended the parents of Kaitlyn’s underage victim. This blog was one of their targets, as was Jeanette Runyon, who steadily exposed the madness inside the “Free Kate” movement by simply screen-capping comments made on the group’s Facebook page and posting those screen-caps to Twitter.

Runyon’s success in this regard made her an especial target of Rachael Carson-Zerbe, one of the most visibly disturbed “Free Kate” supporters. You don’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to say that Carson-Zerbe’s fanatical devotion to Kaitlyn Hunt looks crazy. And the fact that Carson-Zerbe continues to lash out at Runyon, accusing her of various crimes, is further evidence in that regard.

What’s going on here? Why does Carson-Zerbe think it is somehow wrong (or even illegal) to have her own words quoted? Why was I accused of “cyberstalking 2 teens” merely for covering this story?

The problem, as I see it, is that Carson-Zerbe developed unrealistic expectations and has been unable to cope with disappointment. When the “Free Kate” crusade launched on May 17, Hunt’s advocates had a five-day run of positive publicity that convinced them they were on the winning team. It was not until May 22 that people began noticing the first version of the story (in which it was falsely claimed the younger girl was 15, and Kaitlyn only 17, when the affair began) was a deliberate lie. On May 23, the victim’s parents gave their first TV interview, directly contradicting the “homophobia” narrative that the Hunt family had been spinning to sympathetic media. By the end of May, the “Free Kate” movement was in meltdown mode:

Matt Ross notices increasingly desperate attempts by #FreeKate fanatics to suppress negative information about Kaitlyn and her family, which is doomed predictably to fail. What is happening here is an attempt to decontextualize Kaitlyn’s crime: We are supposed to accept without question her mother’s testimony as to what a “model student” Kaitlyn is, and how this was just a harmless “romance” between two teenagers. But who is Kelley Hunt Smith to offer this testimony as a character witness?
Is Kate’s mother trustworthy? Is she a good judge of character?
As soon as you start asking questions like that — “Hater! Bigot!” — you’re going to start finding answers that weren’t what the Hunt family had in mind when they decided to make their daughter’s criminal case a nationwide crusade for “equality.” Your skepticism toward The Story Too Good to Be True, rather than being seen as an interest in knowing the full story before rendering judgment (which is what responsible people do), is to the #FreeKate mob evidence of your bad faith (mala fides), because True Believers must believe.
This exposes the real truth, namely that you are dealing with a religious phenomenon: Saint Kate of the Blessed Finger, whose rituals occur within the Shrine of the Sacred Toilet Stall.

That was on May 31 and rather than accept the reality of what had happened — Kaitlyn Hunt was guilty and her parents got caught spreading a lie — “Free Kate” supporters convinced themselves that the real problem was the “hate” of those who exposed the truth.

Once people start engaging in that kind of blame-shifting rationalization, they often find themselves unable to let it go, simply because they have a certain type of personality: Their self-pitying claims of victimhood, and excuse-making strategies to shift responsibility for their own failures, are symptomatic of underlying problems. Yet they cannot accept the fact that they are the cause of their own problems, and therefore require scapegoats to bear the blame.

My advice to anyone harassed by such a disturbed freak is to keep in mind the key point: It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Never let them get away with the typical sociopathic game of claiming that you are responsible for their problems. Clearly, they had problems before they ever heard of you, and they will continue to have problems long after the present argument ends.

“Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. . . . He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don’t listen to him. Remember that — do not listen.”
— The Exorcist (1973)

Maintain your sanity by ignoring their attacks — don’t be defensive, don’t argue the details — until you catch them clearly lying or threatening you, Then turn the spotlight on them until they run away shrieking about what a victim they are. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Just tell the truth about these disturbed freaks. They hate that.

 

Category: Kaitlyn Hunt

In The Mailbox: 10.23.13

Posted on | October 23, 2013 | 9 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Dead Republican Party: Brett Kimberlin Limerick Contest
First Street Journal: How Elon Musk Is Getting Rich On Your Tax Dollars
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Yo! @GOP! Over Here! Obamacare Is Still A Joke!
Doug Powers: The Obamacare Runaround
Twitchy: Obamacare “Glitches” Explained In Two Perfect Pics


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Budget Discord Simmers On The Left
American Thinker: The ObamaCare Black Hole
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – Quantity v. Quality, a.k.a. Death Panels
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, October 22
Jammie Wearing Fools: Obama Pal Warren Buffett – Obamacare Website “Obviously A Huge Screw Up”
JustOneMinute: Meanwhile, Back On The Choom Gang
Pat Dollard: Rand Paul To Hannity – “Liberals Have No Idea Of How Capitalism Works”
Protein Wisdom: Not So Fast, GOP Establishment
Shot In The Dark: Kennedy Non Grata
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – If They Who Wrote The Software Don’t Trust It
The Lonely Conservative: Nice Work If You Can Get It
Megan McArdle: Seven “Solutions” That Won’t Save ObamaCare


Category: Blogging, Linkagery

White House Official = Twitter Troll?

Posted on | October 23, 2013 | 26 Comments

This is disturbing news:

Jofi Joseph, a director in the non-proliferation section of the National Security Staff at the White House, has been surreptitiously tweeting under the moniker @natsecwonk, a Twitter feed famous inside Washington policy circles since it began in February, 2011 until it was shut down last week.
Two administration officials confirmed that the mystery tweeter was Joseph, who has also worked at the State Department and on Capitol Hill for Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Joe Biden. Until recently, he was part of the administration’s team working on negotiations with Iran.

Read the whole thing. Joseph was doing a New Media Age version of an old game played by disgruntled D.C. types, the anonymous “leak” that disparages one’s colleagues or superiors. During the Reagan years, there were always anonymous “sources” who would badmouth the administration’s policy and personnel in quotes to reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Such behavior is disgracefully selfish, because the leaker’s motive — petty revenge and the advancement of personal ambition — is never made apparent in the press coverage based on blind sources. Backstabbing the boss, or sabotaging one’s peers, is not something that lying cowards are ever willing to do under their own names.

Via Memeorandum, with more blog commentary at Outside the Beltway, Right Wing News, Weasel Zippers and Ann Althouse.

 


Category: Journalism

Obama Claims Ignorance of Failure Despite IG’s Clear Warnings in August

Posted on | October 23, 2013 | 50 Comments

Evidently, the administration has chosen Kathleen Sebellius as the designated scapegoat for the ObamaCare fiasco:

President Barack Obama didn’t know of problems with the Affordable Care Act’s website — despite insurance companies’ complaints and the site’s crashing during a test run — until after its now well-documented abysmal launch, the nation’s health chief told CNN on Tuesday.
In an exclusive interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked when the President first learned about the considerable issues with the Obamacare website. Sebelius responded that it was in “the first couple of days” after the site went live October 1.
“But not before that?” Gupta followed up.
To which Sebelius replied, “No, sir.”

Let’s call this what it is: A deliberate lie. Jeff Dunetz points out that concerns with the ObamaCare site made headlines in August:

Back in August the Health and Human Services Inspector General issued a report dealing concerns that the Obamacare website was months behind in testing. . . .
As reported by Reuters on August 6th:
. . . “They’ve removed their margin for error,” said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. “There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint.”

Read the whole thing and be sure to hit Jeff’s tip jar. The entire ethos of Obama is about blame-shifting to avoid responsibility.

 

Category: Barack Obama, Health Care, Yid With Lid

Great Moments In Public Sector Accountability, Waxman Edition

Posted on | October 23, 2013 | 14 Comments

by Smitty

Head over to Breitbart for a clip in which the laughable Harry Waxman (D-Mordor) tries to tell us that Sebelius is doing a swell job, and that contractors failed to live up to their obligations, resulting in the ObamaCare debacle.
As Knopfler notes, “They punish the monkey, and let the organ grinder go.”

Category: Health Care

“Not The Cruz Mask,” He Wimpered. “Yes. Bad Day At The Office,” She Said, As The Whip CRACKED. #50ShadesOfLiberal

Posted on | October 22, 2013 | 48 Comments

by Smitty

Graphic due to Bob. I also blame him for this post. None of these tweets are really bad in isolation, but the sum sort of creeps me out. Time for a shower.

Category: humor

Brief Note for @LeftIsRight4U: Why I Never Argue Politics With Liberals

Posted on | October 22, 2013 | 91 Comments

My tendency toward vehement expression makes me ill-suited for discussions intended to convert people to my point of view. And, honestly, I consider such arguments a waste of time.

Democrats tend to be deficient in either knowledge or character. If their allegiance to Satan’s Own Party is a result of ignorance, they will either wise up, or they won’t. And if they are Democrats because of defects in their character — selfishness and dishonesty being the most common vices of liberals — then it’s good that they are Democrats. “Look over there, voters: A party crowded with liars and thieves.”

Bad causes attract bad people, and the economic platform of the Democrat Party is sufficient to make it a mooch-magnet, the political embodiment of Sloth and Greed: “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”

Honest and decent people abhor the encouragement of vice, and what else have Democrats done but campaign on the Seven Deadly Sins, which they rhetorically transform into “social justice”?

A liberal would cheerfully swallow a porcupine, if you called it “social justice,” but as the Nobel Prize economist Friedrich Hayek demonstrated, social justice is a mirage — a deceptive delusion, a phantom, a will-o’-th’-wisp, the elusive quarry of fools. Watching governments pursue this impossible goal, wrecking society in the name of Equality and Progress, one is reminded that when Thomas More wrote Utopia, he coined the title from Greek: “Nowhere.”

Liberalism leads us on the Road to Nowhere, because liberalism has no logical stopping point. Cede their every demand today, and tomorrow liberals will be back to demand more. One realizes eventually that anyone who cedes anything to liberals is rather like Chamberlain at Munich, supposing he had gained “peace for our time” by bargaining away the Sudetenland to Hitler.

Excuse the totalitarian analogy, but it well suits the case. Unable to excuse the (entirely predictable) failures of their policies, Democrats resort to the kind of scapegoating that is characteristic of totalitarianism. Their defenses of the ObamaCare disaster resemble nothing so much as Stalinists blaming the failure of a Five-Year Plan on Trotskyites, kulaks and saboteurs. Constantly accusing Republicans of mala fides — racism! sexism! homophobia! — is an inadequate substitute for sound policy, but Democrats don’t seem to care.

Envy of the rich, and a selfish craving for “free” benefits, are now apparently enough to organize an electoral majority in this country, so America is now Doomed Beyond All Hope of Redemption, as I said on Election Night. Ignorance and vice have finally triumphed over virtue and truth, and nowhere so much as among the young, who have no memory of the Soviet nightmare, nor of LBJ’s “Great Society” debacle, and who are too lazy to learn anything about the past.

So . . . I don’t argue about politics with liberals.

When I was a young Democrat (as I was until my mid-30s), no one could persuade me I was wrong. It wasn’t until I began to realize the truth, quite independently of any arguments made by any of my friends, that I began to resent my former foolishness.

I had been a chump, a mark, the kind of sucker who thinks he can break even if he plays just one more game of three-card monte.

Once I wised up, by God, I wised up. As I wrote five years ago:

“Bill Clinton, in my mind, had two great accomplishments
as president: He signed the Welfare Reform Act of 1996
and he made me an ex-Democrat.” 

Now, it happens that some liberal Democrats, including @LeftIsRight4U, share my contempt for the Axis of Assholes on Twitter who, on the one hand, have been cheerleading Neal Rauhauser’s online harassment of Brett Kimberlin’s enemies even while, on the other hand, harassing liberal Democrats active in the #UniteBlue project.

Because of this convergence — Rauhauser’s profound viciousness means that his enemies tend to accumulate — the #UniteBlue people now stand accused of being “fake” progressives because they happen to have a common enemy with some of us on the Right.

As I often say, however, “sociopath” is not a political philosophy, and the hateful dishonesty of those trying to destroy #UniteBlue is something anyone can and should despise, whatever their partisan or ideological allegiance. Bad causes attract bad people, and wherever Neal Rauhauser goes, evil is sure to follow. It is sad to see political passions become aroused to such a point that some people embrace the nihilism expressed by the radical slogan, “By Any Means Necessary.”

Start thinking like that, abandon decency and honor, and you will eventually disgrace whatever “cause” you hoped to advance. Good causes need never resort to dishonorable means, and how good could any “cause” be, if it is supported by the likes of Neal Rauhauser?

Contemporary discourse is hopeless because Democrats have cynically exploited irrational sentiments, taking advantage of the widespread ignorance of history — and economics and, for that matter, basic arithmetic — to convince naive idealists that the only reason the streets are not paved with gold and lined with money trees is because of those greedy racist Republican teabaggers.

In such an anti-intellectual climate, attempting to explain why Democrat policies are harmful is a waste of time. Anyone who was such a fool as to vote for Barack Obama twice is beyond reach of facts or reason. Had I the eloquence of Cicero, I could not persuade them.

Therefore, there is no danger that #UniteBlue will commit political treason (for so they are accused by the Rauhauser crew) by a mere tactical alliance with Rauhauser’s “right-wing” targets including myself. And if any of the #UniteBlue people turn into greedy racist Republican teabaggers, certainly no one could ever blame me.

Because I never argue about politics with liberals.

 

Category: Politics

Col. Nathan Jessup, Tea Partier

Posted on | October 22, 2013 | 26 Comments

by Smitty

“Son, we live in a world that has elections, and that elections have to be guarded by men with principles. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lefty? The Tea Party has a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom.

You weep for Progress, and you curse the Tea Party. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what the Tea Party knows. That Progress’s demise, while tragic, probably wasted lives. And the Tea Party’s existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves these United States.

You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at Burning Man, you want the Tea Party at that election, you need the Tea Party at that election.

The Tea Party uses words like honor, code, loyalty. It uses these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. The Tea Party has neither the time nor the inclination to explain itself to a citizen who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom the Tea Party strives to restore, and then rejects the Constitutional manner in which it’s provided.

It would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, it’s suggested you pick up a sign, and stand tall at a rally.

Either way, the Tea Party doesn’t give two hoots what you think you are entitled to.”

Category: humor
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin